He was awake at 6:55 so Carly nursed him and was a bit late getting out the door. After being quiet for awhile, he popped up saying “Line down, sideways V, turn to K.” More Hangeul vowels with Duplos as Carly left, then reading Opuestos and having Bluie and Green Monster do the rabbit time – this time also wanting Turkey (the elephant) to dance along with them. He then climbed on the couch and asked for the iPad and almost exclusively watched the individual letter songs he likes.
Morning was going smoothly and thought we had plenty of time, until we got to putting on his coats and brushing his hair. Went downhill from there, in part because I was trying to put two light coats on him instead of his usual winter coat, and he wasn’t happy about the change. So we went straight from that to his new 5-TOUCH class with a different teacher, getting there a couple minutes late. I think he was a bit freaked out by the new teacher. Anyway, he made it through class, but not as smoothly as the Teuni Teuni class yesterday. She did a lot of talking/demonstrating, which isn’t his favorite part. There was only one toy activity, which he loved: a wooden cake with velcro on the pieces and top so you could take the pieces apart and put them together, and put candles and strawberries and other pieces on top. A couple times in the class, as she was demonstrating new songs, etc. I had to pick him up and we watched from the back. At one point he walked over to the door. I called him back, and he came back to me and kind of hugged me from behind and put his head on my shoulder. One interesting thing from class was that early on he kept saying “Hear verde”. I finally figured out that he was talking about the voice coming from the speaker. This teacher used a headset and her voice was going through the speaker system. Maybe a bit of synesthesia? Or maybe just being funny…
He was in pretty good shape by the end of class though. We grabbed our shoes and went out to put them on and get in the backpack. He took off with one of my shoes in the wrong direction (I wanted to go to the benches to the right). He headed to the coffeeshop and chose a chair he wanted us to use. While we were putting on our shoes, a woman came over who was the director of the cultural center and asked to get my contact info, as Atsuko is still on our account. So we went to her office and did that. Took surprisingly long to simply put my name and phone number in the system. August kept busy by using a pen to write on one of the flat paper cups. After that, Jihong and his mom were still there, so we talked for a few minutes.
We finally headed out and went straight to the subway and down to Children’s Grand Park. Bought kimbap and smokey eggs along the way. Went up to the outdoor concert hall and sat up near the top in the sun to eat our lunch. He spent almost all the time (20 minutes or so) walking back and forth on the bench as we ate. Ate all the eggs and a lot of kimbap. He was talking a lot about zookeepers, and pointing in every direction saying “Zookeepers here”. He also played with his shadow a lot while standing on the bench. It was now 6 hours since he had woken up, and he said “More sleep time”. We went and changed him and took our walk. He slept from 1:16 to 2:05 in the upstairs cafe. Woke up and got out of the backpack, but didn’t want to hang out in the coffee shop. So we went and headed to the zoo, me holding him/him walking today. He did a lot of ‘hiding’ from the primates and elephants, then wanted some crackers.
From there we walked up around the ferocious animals complex. He was walking slowly, a couple feet in front of me, and a woman not looking where she was going totally walked straight into him and knocked him down. Luckily a quick recovery. All the animals were out, so we were able to see the Asian bears, the servals, the jackals, and the lynx. One of the servals was right on the other side of the glass and he said “Touch it…hold it.” We got to the zookeeper gate behind the elephants and he heard people (zookeepers) talking on the other side. This was very exciting. He said “Two zookeepers”, presumably because we could hear at least two talking. There was a hole in the gate and I let him look through to ‘spy’ on the zookeepers. After that, we kept talking about spying on more zookeepers. We went into the tropical building to see his favorite zookeeper door, and he spotted a new one he hadn’t seen before. No zookeepers though. Back outside we had to go look at the “zookeeper truck”.
He wanted more food. When I asked him what he wanted he said “Zookeeper food”. So we got down on the tiger bench and had a snack and he played for several minutes, lying across the bench, standing on it and singing songs, etc.
We had to get going as we had to go buy strawberries and go meet Carly at 4:30. We stopped by the entrance to change him and out on the elephant thing he took out the little stick he had played with on Wednesday and started throwing it around. He was doing some screaming in the bathroom, and I was encouraging him to use his words instead, and had suggested “Hurry up, dada” – one I might regret staying, as he started to say it as he walked around. And actually, he has been using his words. Both earlier and as I was changing him he would say “More screaming” or the like, to express that he was frustrated, but wouldn’t actually do the screaming.
Anyway, we got going and took the subway to Hagye. There was a little fruit/veggie stand by the bus stop and they had strawberries. Bought those then hopped on the bus to APIS. August covered his eyes as soon as we got to the field, hiding for real this time, and kept them covered the entire way to her room. When one person started talking to us a bit he did some screeching. In her room he immediately wanted to do some coloring with markers, so he did that. We left about 5. He covered his eyes for the entirety of the walk out. We headed to the part, and ran into some other people about halfway there. He hid from them, and was saying “No this” and pointing to them. It wasn’t looking good for the party itself. But when we got there he first wanted food, so he tolerated the party for that, then we got out his notebook and he drew for a couple minutes. He got comfortable and was walking all over the place. He was really entertained by the older girls. He took one break from the party to nurse, then came back and was hyper for the rest of the party. Ate a lot: walnut bread, some chocolate chip cookie, egg things, couple mandu, strawberry. Near the end Carly was holding him upside down. When we left he said “bye” and “adios” to people.
We walked home. Still 60 degrees and very nice despite now being dark. When we got back to the building and were in the elevator he did his “More screaming” thing as he was getting impatient. As we got out of the elevator and headed to the apartment, he said “Dada hurry up.” Skipped a bath tonight. He was still up for awhile and went to sleep a little before 9.
We also figured out our “Colors ABC song he’s been requesting”. It has the colors in English, Spanish, and Korean and roughly uses the tune to the ABC song. This was his idea; and if I tried to make up a different tune he would say “No”. Oh, and he started saying “T W O two” as we walked today.
New words/phrases: zookeepers food, feeding the elephants, dropped my stick, want to go to water museum, broken hand dryer, too hot hands dryer, hurry up dada Z, spelling two, easel
New 5-TOUCH class: https://youtu.be/jd-b6G1fpgU
Eating a banana: https://youtu.be/rroZ-bGCa5w
Zookeepers right there: https://youtu.be/PAT4iIqM90A
Playing with his shadow: https://youtu.be/qQRns9Bmi8Y
Playing on another bench: https://youtu.be/VMumj7v06II
Brasos, manos and throwing the sti
ck: https://youtu.be/mpT7B-jw6HY
Throwing the little stick around: https://youtu.be/aHWnkeM3TW0
Handstand shows up: https://youtu.be/YGVNAN10L-I
At the party:
– https://youtu.be/XHagpi4IwB8
– https://youtu.be/EeKGcEh1STE
– https://youtu.be/eR0y9ytTJhY
Not wanting to give up the owl shirt:
New 5-TOUCH class:
Children’s Grand Park. Lunch:
Servals:
Playing on a bench:
He looked up at the little picture and said “Zinnie and Mama”:
Little stick:
Hiding at APIS:
Party:
Green chip:
Asleep:
